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第 145 课:Different Types of Composers 不同类型的音乐家-3

It is a question at such a time of creating music in a well-known and accepted style and doing it in a way that is better than anyone has done it before you.

The traditionalist type of composer begins with a pattern rather than with a theme.

The creative act with Palestrina is not the thematic conception so much as the personal treatment of a well-established pattern. 帕勒斯提那的创作活动与其说是主题概念不如说是对既定模式的个性化处理。

And even Bach, who composed forty-eight of the most various and inspired themes in his Well Tempered Clavichord, knew in advance the general formal mold that they were to fill. It goes without saying that we are not living in a traditionalist period nowadays. 即使创作了48首主题各异充满灵感的《平均律钢琴曲集》的巴赫也知道他们将遵循的一般模式。不用说今天我们不是生活在一个传统时期。

One might add, for the sake of completeness, a fourth type of composer - the pioneer type: men like Gesualdo in the seventeenth century, Moussorgsky and Berlioz in the nineteenth, Debussy and Edgar Varese in the twentieth. 为完整起见也许还应加上第四种作曲家--先锋型,诸如17世纪的杰苏尔多、19世纪的穆索尔斯基和柏辽兹,以及20世纪的德彪西和瓦雷兹。

It is difficult to summarize the composing methods of so diversified a group. One can safely say that their approach to composition is the opposite of the traditionalist type. 这样一类作曲家如此多样化的创作手法难以概括,但可以肯定的一点是他们的作曲方法与传统型针锋相对。

They clearly oppose conventional solutions of musical problems. In many ways, their attitude is experimental - they seek to add new harmonies, new sonorities, new formal principles. 他们鲜明地反对音乐问题的通行解决办法。许多方面他们的态度是试验的--寻求添加新的融合、新的音效、新的创作形式。

The pioneer type was the characteristic one at the turn of the seventeenth century and also at the beginning of the twentieth century, but it is much less evident today. 先锋型在17世纪末和20世纪初期很具代表性,但是如今其特征已不太明显。